Jan Wong is a journalist. Even when she’s being dragged down by depression, she reaches up for the truth.
Thursday night Wong gave a TedxUNB talk at the Wu Conference Centre. The St. Thomas journalism professor talked about her experience with The Globe and Mail’s denial of her work-place depression, and the aftermath that only hampered her recovery from mental illness.
In 2012 Wong published a book entitled: “Out of the Blue: a Memoir of Workplace Depression, Recovery, Redemption and, Yes, Happiness” about how The Globe treated her. She explained to the sold-out crowd how they’ve tried to prevent people from reading the book ever since.
After writing a piece for The Globe and Mail about a shooting in Quebec, Wong experienced a racist backlash. As the backlash began to overwhelm her, she slipped into depression. It was not only random critics who were attacking her though.
“The newspaper is my workplace, it’s my home. So when you open the pages of my newspaper to people who will trash me, that’s not proper. A couple of letters to the editor? Okay, but not columns and certainly not my own editor-in-chief writing a column that I was wrong when he had edited the story himself,” Wong said.
This breach of trust by her employer only pulled Wong deeper into the depths of depression.
“The real betrayal was when, after I had been sick for a few weeks, they said to me, ‘You’re not sick. Get back to work or we’re going to cut off your sick pay,’” said Wong.
In her state of despair Wong couldn’t function. She couldn’t remember things, she couldn’t focus, most of all she couldn’t write.
The Globe suggested she resign, offered her a sum of money and told her she could tell people she had decided to go in a different direction. But Wong argues she was sick and didn’t want to have to leave The Globe like that.
“I think they thought there was so much stigma to mental illness, and so much embarrassment of getting fired, it’s pretty horrible. They thought I would just play along with the scenario and go, ‘Okay, I resign.’ But I wouldn’t do that.”
As a writer, she knew some good could come out of her depression. It would not all be for naught; she had a story to tell.
Wong talked to her publisher and, with not even a title in mind, Doubleday told her that they wanted her book.
Wong then entered negotiations with The Globe, not about money, but about what she could or couldn’t say about The Globe.
“The reason it took me almost two years to end the relationship was because, ironically, Canada’s national newspaper didn’t want me to talk. They wouldn’t give me the money unless I signed a confidentiality order promising never to tell anybody about what had happened. Well I can’t do that either. I can’t lie that I resigned, I can’t lie that I’m not sick and I can’t lie about my own story. So it took two years and by the end when we finally settled, I was completely free to talk about my story,” Wong said.
When it was close to completion she ran into another roadblock. Doubleday agreed that Wong couldn’t mention The Globe in a book about a case of workplace depression that happened at The Globe.
Realizing it was impossible to write her book that way, she decided to self-publish.
For the last two years, The Globe’s lawyers have been coming after Wong, and though, having won the freedom to talk openly about The Globe, she said she can’t legally say why she’s recently had to lawyer up in return.
“Right now, I’m not sick so I can stand up for myself. I’m not going to let them break me.”
